This is an hour-long seminar by a cosmologist that, as the title indicates, purports to explain how a universe such as ours can give birth to itself "from nothing." The guy is very charismatic, yet is a staunch atheist (Richard Dawkins introduces this speaker)...a belief-system to which academic types are wont to adhere. I thoroughly enjoyed this lecture, yet this narcissist doesn't even address the question implicit in the title: what fomented existence? To me, this seems to be reflective of a (marginally) clever tendency of these types to augment and finesse the question into something more answerable by their field's dogma. In short, my contention is that this guy and Dawkins and their ilk can say all they want about the big bang, and how the universe started. Go ahead, smart guys. But when they try to infer knowledge from evidence of The Big Bang about what led up to The Big Bang, they're talking extra-field. That is, once a scientist starts talking about what happened before The Big Bang, they're speaking in philosophical terms. DISCLOSURE: I am not a religious person.